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CVE-2026-84486 – Unauthenticated Denial of Service – Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (automation

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Summary

CVE-2026-84486 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in the automation-controller component of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2. Debug endpoints that trigger the internal job scheduler are routed and reachable in production without any DEBUG guard or authentication check, letting an unauthenticated network attacker starve the job dispatch system for all tenants. The flaw carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.2 (High).

Technical details

  • Root cause: automation-controller ships debug endpoints intended only for development use, but these routes remain active and world-accessible ("AllowAny") on production builds, without being gated behind a DEBUG mode check.
  • The debug root view also enumerates the available debug endpoints to unauthenticated visitors, making them easy to discover.
  • Trigger conditions: an attacker with network access to the controller repeatedly invokes these debug endpoints, each invocation attempting to acquire the cluster-wide scheduler advisory lock.
  • Attack vector: Network (AV:N), no privileges required (PR:N), no user interaction (UI:N) — the endpoints require no authentication.
  • Impact: repeated lock acquisition starves the legitimate scheduler, causing real scheduler runs to be skipped and stalling job dispatch across all tenants, while also consuming controller web worker capacity. Availability impact is rated High; confidentiality impact is Low; integrity is unaffected.
  • Classified under CWE-489: Active Debug Code.

Affected software

  • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 — automation-controller package
  • automation-controller-container
  • Reported components include ansible-automation-platform-2.6/controller-rhel9 and ansible-automation-platform-2.7/controller-rhel9 streams
  • AAP 2.4 is also noted as under verification for impact

Severity

  • CVSS v3.1 Base Score: 8.2 (High)
  • Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H

Mitigation and recommended actions

  • Immediate: at time of writing, Red Hat lists this issue as unresolved (status "NEW") with no fixed package version yet published; check Red Hat’s advisory page for the current fix status and apply the patched automation-controller build as soon as it is released.
  • Red Hat’s planned fix restricts the debug endpoints to system administrators and ensures they only activate when debug mode is explicitly enabled — apply this update once available.
  • If no patch is yet available: restrict network access to the automation-controller web interface to trusted management networks only, and place it behind an authentication proxy or firewall/ACL that blocks unauthenticated access to debug routes from the public internet.
  • Monitor controller logs for repeated, unauthenticated requests to debug/scheduler endpoints as a possible indicator of exploitation attempts.

References

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